Sophia Vasalou

University of Birmingham

Sophia Vasalou’s research focuses on the development of virtue ethics in the Islamic intellectual tradition, with a specialization in Imam al-Ghazālī's work.

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To See the World for the First Time

Can religious traditions help us see what is most mysterious in what is most ordinary?

“What seems clear is that the wonder we experience as adults simply cannot be of the same kind as the one we experienced as children, or spring from the same causes. Yet if we want to figure out how we can still find our way to it as grown-ups, it will help to have a more fine-grained picture of the routes we followed as children. Because while children may be brought to wonder by experiences of new things in the world around them—the kinds of experiences their parents make possible for them through weekend trips to the aquarium or the museum, to let them stare wide-eyed at sleek fish gliding through water tanks and the skeletal remains of prehistoric colossi towering overhead—it would be a mistake to restrict our attention to these kinds of experiences—that is to say, to visual encounters with outside phenomena. Besides the wonder experienced in aquariums and museums, we need to think of the kind of wonder provoked on a parent’s lap or at the bedside by stories and books.” —Sophia Vasalou

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